David Gwyther

Antarctic Coastal Ocean Modeller

Achievements

My biggest achievement to date has been receiving a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship in 2013. The Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship is, 'a program of highly competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946.

The program was established to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills.' During my scholarship I was a visiting research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, where I undertook research to improve simulations of ice shelves.

General Responsibilities

Research and Projects

Increased heat circulation leads to increased sub-ice shelf melting, and raising of sea level by higher ice discharge from the Antarctic ice sheet. I am researching this impact, using remote sensing data and global climate models to inform a 3-dimensional ocean model. My research is supported by the CSIRO and UTAS through the Quantitative Marine Science PhD program.

I am highly skilled in scientific communication (oral and written).

I am dedicated and motivated to research.

I am extremely computer savvy, as well as confident at quickly picking up new software.

Current Projects

I am currently focussing on investigating the link between the roughness of the ice at the bottom of large ice shelves and melting/freezing. It is thought that this roughness is an important control on the magnitude and/or distribution of melt/free, but it is very poorly understood - mainly due to the difficulties in observing this submarine realm. Through use of idealised ocean models, I can simulate this environment and hope to improve future ice shelf - ocean models.

Grants & Funding

Funding Summary

Projects

Projections of future sea level rise suffer from uncertainties in the contribution from the Antarctic ice sheet. One of the major drivers of Antarctic ice mass loss is through interaction with the ocean. Numerical models offer one of the few logistically feasible avenues for improving the understanding of this interaction. This project will undertake a series of ocean-ice shelf model experiments, contributing to a community-wide ocean/ice sheet model intercomparison.

Projections of future sea level rise suffer from uncertainties in the contribution from the Antarctic ice sheet. One of the major drivers of Antarctic ice mass loss is through interaction with the ocean. Numerical models offer one of the few logistically feasible avenues for improving the understanding of this interaction. This project will undertake a series of ocean-ice shelf model experiments, contributing to a community-wide ocean/ice sheet model intercomparison.

This project will undertake a series of ocean-ice shelf model experiments, contributing to a community-wide ocean/ice sheet model intercomparison.

Funding

National Computational Infrastructure ($0)

Scheme

Merit Allocation Scheme

Administered By

University of Tasmania

Research Team

Gwyther DE

Year

2016

2016 ROMS Asia-Pacific Workshop (2016)$26,242

Description

Understanding ocean dynamics and interactions at high latitudes, with sea ice, atmosphere and the ice sheets is critically important for both safe and efficient operations in polar regions and for societal adaptation to climate change. These issues and impacts are of national and international importance and include; understanding current sea level rise and the contribution to future sea level rise, operational sea ice forecasting and assimilation, and the basic understanding of ice/ocean/atmosphere processes. Coupled ocean/sea-ice/atmosphere models have proven to be a valuable tool for examining these processes. The Regional Ocean Modelling System (ROMS) is a commonly used ocean model which is designed to handle regional-scale simulations, with a terrain-following vertical coordinate which can increase resolution at sea floor and sea surface. The model has a long development history and has previously been supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The workshop will cover theory, development and application of ocean models (and will be general enough to apply to different ocean modelling systems) and will explore ocean science from the continental shelf break to the ice shelf.This grant will support the running of the 2016 ROMS workshop.

The aim of this proposal is to initiate a large project to investigate the processes mentioned above by developing a state-of-the-art model configuration, using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), with two key features:1. The domain of this model covers Antarctica and the continental shelf seas, northwards to the abyssal ocean. From observations we know that in certain regions significant amounts of relatively warm water can reach ice shelves and cause large basal melt rates, whereas for other ice shelves that are well protected from intrusions of warm water, basal melt rates are comparatively lower. Only the use of a full circum-Antarctic domain will allow us to compare the relevant processes in different regions.2. The spatial resolution of this model will be 1 km, which has been shown to be the minimum resolution required to resolve the dynamics of mesoscale eddies relevant to the transport of warm waters to the shelf.